@devilangel657 / devilangel657.tumblr.com
Mace Windu can do whatever he likes with whatever attitude he wants actually cause he's in charge of wrangling a group of superpowered, psychic adreneline junkies who like to have heated academic debates using laser swords in their spare time. and then. AND THEN!! he has to regularly talk with politicians too??? disgusting. awful. my man is so tired.
Had someone recently respond to my defense of Windu (and the Jedi more broadly) with well “there may be many examples of Mace being heroic, but there aren’t really any of him being compassionate”. Any thoughts or counterpoints to this?
Depends on what continuity they're working with, cause if it's Legends they're talking about I'd have to question how much Legends content they've even watched/read/played lmaooo (off the top of my head, there's the story of how Mace got his hurrikaine crystal, which he is given after saving an injured man who'd previously tried to kill him, there's his interactions with various characters in Shatterpoint, from guiding them through their problems to mercy-kills, and there's even that suuuuper duper Jedi hating comic Children of the Force that still has him giving back a child the parents regretted giving away. And that's just me listing things off the top of my head, there's a LOT more.)
If it's straight up canon they're talking about... what's even the difference between being heroic and compassionate when your heroism manifests by selflessly putting yourself in arms' way for the sake of others? Cause he does that OFTEN. (Throwing the two troopers on the energy bridge to safety even as the bridge vanishes from under him on Ryloth, trying to go save Boba and Aurra Sing's hostages while he's still injured in the Revenge arc, getting his troops to evacuate while he deals with a giant bomb in season 7... again, just off the top of my head.) He's consistently valuing other people's lives above his own, he's just not particularly cuddly about it.
But if it's unquestionable compassion they want...
Cmon.
For further examples of compassion and/or heroism...
In canon, there's also this moment here:
Where he first rescues a girl, then straight-up tells her:
"You have worth."
In Legends, there's that time he saved an old lady from thugs...
... or that time he spared a mob of Sith worshippers, clearly high, poor and scared, instead talking it out with them and leaving them be.
Oh, and Mace being nice to animals.
In neither of those cases is it framed as a "well, he's just doing his job" type of scenario.
When he's...
... he's going out of his way to do so.
I LOVE THIS SONG, so let me do the next chorus by adding a few more examples from Disney and Legends continuity, too! I mean, Mace with the Zillo beast alone is enough to show that he's a very compassionate man, but I love when the Mace Windu Defense Squad Rises Up. Because, yes, Mace is a heroic character very often, but he absolutely is a compassionate one in multiple places:
Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu: (Disney) When Cyslin Myrr and Mace visit to help a planet that's in desperate need, Mace displays his compassion when he talks about, "My heart hangs heavy to witness such pain, Master."
Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu: (Disney) When Prosset Dibs attempts to murder Mace, because he's fallen to the dark side, Mace displays incredible compassion in saying that Prosset is a victim of the war that's pressing down on them (they're all a bunch of empaths, after all) and that the doctrine he believes in is one of helping people, so instead of true punishment, they have Prosset work in the library while they help him.
Star Wars Tales: (Legends) Mace is sent on a solo mission and winds up fighting a rock-like person, defeating it but that sends it smashed into a thousand pieces. Afterwards, Mace gently asks to help and puts the person back together again.
Had someone recently respond to my defense of Windu (and the Jedi more broadly) with well “there may be many examples of Mace being heroic, but there aren’t really any of him being compassionate”. Any thoughts or counterpoints to this?
Depends on what continuity they're working with, cause if it's Legends they're talking about I'd have to question how much Legends content they've even watched/read/played lmaooo (off the top of my head, there's the story of how Mace got his hurrikaine crystal, which he is given after saving an injured man who'd previously tried to kill him, there's his interactions with various characters in Shatterpoint, from guiding them through their problems to mercy-kills, and there's even that suuuuper duper Jedi hating comic Children of the Force that still has him giving back a child the parents regretted giving away. And that's just me listing things off the top of my head, there's a LOT more.)
If it's straight up canon they're talking about... what's even the difference between being heroic and compassionate when your heroism manifests by selflessly putting yourself in arms' way for the sake of others? Cause he does that OFTEN. (Throwing the two troopers on the energy bridge to safety even as the bridge vanishes from under him on Ryloth, trying to go save Boba and Aurra Sing's hostages while he's still injured in the Revenge arc, getting his troops to evacuate while he deals with a giant bomb in season 7... again, just off the top of my head.) He's consistently valuing other people's lives above his own, he's just not particularly cuddly about it.
But if it's unquestionable compassion they want...
Cmon.
For further examples of compassion and/or heroism...
In canon, there's also this moment here:
Where he first rescues a girl, then straight-up tells her:
"You have worth."
In Legends, there's that time he saved an old lady from thugs...
... or that time he spared a mob of Sith worshippers, clearly high, poor and scared, instead talking it out with them and leaving them be.
Oh, and Mace being nice to animals.
In neither of those cases is it framed as a "well, he's just doing his job" type of scenario.
When he's...
... he's going out of his way to do so.
I LOVE THIS SONG, so let me do the next chorus by adding a few more examples from Disney and Legends continuity, too! I mean, Mace with the Zillo beast alone is enough to show that he's a very compassionate man, but I love when the Mace Windu Defense Squad Rises Up. Because, yes, Mace is a heroic character very often, but he absolutely is a compassionate one in multiple places:
Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu: (Disney) When Cyslin Myrr and Mace visit to help a planet that's in desperate need, Mace displays his compassion when he talks about, "My heart hangs heavy to witness such pain, Master."
Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu: (Disney) When Prosset Dibs attempts to murder Mace, because he's fallen to the dark side, Mace displays incredible compassion in saying that Prosset is a victim of the war that's pressing down on them (they're all a bunch of empaths, after all) and that the doctrine he believes in is one of helping people, so instead of true punishment, they have Prosset work in the library while they help him.
Star Wars Tales: (Legends) Mace is sent on a solo mission and winds up fighting a rock-like person, defeating it but that sends it smashed into a thousand pieces. Afterwards, Mace gently asks to help and puts the person back together again.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars | “Unfinished Business”
#JUMPING LIKE AN ENTIRE MILE DOWN INTO A GIANT WAREHOUSE #CRASHING RIGHT THROUGH GLASS WITH ONLY YOUR LIGHTSABER #NOT EVEN A JETPACK DESPITE THAT YOU HAVE THEM RIGHT THERE #THEN STOPPING THE MIDDLE OF A THOUSAND BATTLE DROIDS #TO BE AN EXTRA FUCKER #BUT ALSO TO GIVE THEM THE CHANCE TO MAKE A BETTER CHOICE? #THAT’S IT THAT’S THE JEDI THAT’S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW
#I COULD WRITE AN ENTIRE ESSAY ON HOW AMAZING ALL OF THIS IS #HOW I’LL ALWAYS BE GRATEFUL TO TCW FOR SHOWING US WHAT A JEDI MASTER CAN REALLY DO #AND FOR SHOWING US HOW AWESOME MACE WINDU IS
I was innocently trying to work my way through a fic and then the author was like "Mace Windu discourages Jedi having emotions" so I just. noped out of there.
Me, replying to this a month late because I have a shit memory and routinely forget to respond to things? It's more likely then you think...
I'm gonna be honest, I fucking hate when people make the Jedi out to be "emotionally repressed" or "not allowed to have emotions," especially in fics and especially when it's untagged (like seriously y'all, there are "flawed Jedi Order" and "Jedi Order Critical" tags on Ao3 for a reason, use them so I don't get halfway through a fic only to be smacked in the face with anti-Jedi bullshit).
But one thing I hate the most is when people always seem to make Mace Windu out to be the one enforcing this policy or as some cold, heartless asshole who looks down on everyone.
Like, where in canon is he shown to be like that??? Nowhere!
It's such a fucking disservice to his character to frame him that way, and I will forever hate it.
Also, I think it's so funny and interesting how the people who usually paint Mace Windu (a kind, calm, level-headed, empathetic person) as a cold heartless jackass, are also the same people who paint Anakin Skywalker (a fascist, man-baby, tantrum-throwing, child murderer) as some "sweet misunderstood baby who just wanted to love his wife and be happy uwu."
Gee, I wonder what could possibly fuel those characterizations...
Ngl I have no idea why some people hate Mace Windu.
He's literally like one of my favorite Jedi, probably like my 2nd favorite if I had to give him a ranking, and he's just like...so awesome!
He's kind and compassionate.
He's brave.
He's intelligent.
He's witty.
He has a purple lightsaber.
He's such a talented duelist that he kicked Jango and Grievous' asses.
And almost beat Palpatine (something even Yoda couldn't do, like come on--that's badass!)
Like seriously, what's not to like???
In the Sequels, Luke says this:
"Now that they're extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified...but if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure, hypocrisy, hubris."
And, after bringing this quote up, Matthew says this:
"While this kind of tea spill coming from Luke was considered pretty sacrilegious, both by other characters as well as the audience, I think that Luke has a point if you examine the movies with a little more scrutiny. His criticisms aren't exactly unfounded."
Now, first of all, what Luke is saying here cannot be trusted as "fact" or anything to go off of, mainly because of two reasons.
---
1. He's trying to convince Rey not to be a Jedi or, at the very least, to not make him train her (which is pretty much the same thing), and at this point in time he pretty clearly hates himself and blames himself for the state of the galaxy. He's been stewing in his rocky hideaway for who knows how long, with nothing but the ocean and his own self-loathing to keep him company.
He's saying this here so that Rey will give up and not make him train her, because he's scared of making the same mistakes he did with Kylo Ren and fucking up the galaxy even more (we see a similar thing with Obi-Wan in the Kenobi show, where he refuses to save Leia at first because he's scared of not being able to save her--like he wasn't able to "save" Anakin).
And the traits, the "legacy," he's assigning the Jedi...isn't actually the legacy of the Jedi. It's him assigning what he believes to be his own legacy to the Jedi as a whole, because it's easier for him to deal with his own failure that way.
and 2. Luke is framed as being wrong for saying this. None of the other characters agree with him, eventually he does end up training Rey, and eventually he lets go of his pain and fair and grief and "becomes a Jedi again" and faces his "legacy of failure"--Kylo Ren.
It's obvious that the movies are clearly making him out to be wrong when he says those things, you don't need to have a neon sign posted above his head that says "WRONG" in order to see it. So taking his words at face-value is just trying to take a bad-faith reading of the Jedi--rather than the "objective scrutiny" that Matthew is purportedly putting the Jedi up to in this theory.
---
I would also like to argue that Luke's only real knowledge of the Prequel Era Jedi and their actions/beliefs/traditions/etc. is...lacking, to say the least.
The Empire literally destroyed and desecrated every Jedi Temple that they could find, they wiped out all the information they could about the Jedi, and then spread anti-Jedi propaganda through the galaxy for years. Not to mention that, by this point, pretty much every Prequel Era Jedi is dead.
There's no one around to really tell Luke about the Jedi's actions or culture and what little information he might've been able to dig up probably wouldn't have amounted to much. So, when Luke says this, it can only really be taken as a commentary on the Post-Prequel Era Jedi, because he doesn't know enough about the Prequel Era Jedi to make any criticisms.
---
Matthew then says:
"There are certainly examples of the Jedi doing some pretty unsportsmanlike things to innocent victims throughout the old movies, like manipulating-" [plays a video cut of Obi-Wan in ANH, mind-tricking the stormtroopers into thinking that R2 and 3PO "aren't the droids they're looking for"]
This example is pretty easy to debunk, because Matthew leaves out the context.
Obi-Wan has to do this.
Because let's look at what would probably happen if he didn't:
1. He and Luke would be arrested and turned in to the Empire, probably Vader, and Vader would immediately recognize Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan would get murdered.
2. Vader would realize Luke was his son and probably try to indoctrinate him into an Imperial way of thinking, and Palpatine/Vader would probably have Luke "trained" (read: tortured) into becoming an Inquisitor.
and 3. The droids would probably either be memory wiped or destroyed, therefore destroying the plans for the Death Star that the Rebellion needed to destroy it--and the Death Star wouldn't be able to be destroyed, more planets and people would probably be killed.
Aside from the thing with the Death Star plans, Obi-Wan probably knows that that's what's gonna happen--and, if the Empire is looking for the droids, then it's pretty obvious that the droids are important to the Rebellion. So it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Obi-Wan probably understands that the Rebellion would be hurt by their loss.
Not to mention that stormtroopers aren't "innocent victims."
They actively sign up to work for the Empire and take part in the oppression of countless peoples and worlds. And It's not like Obi-Wan pulled aside a random stormtrooper just so he could mind-fuck him, they were approached by the troopers first and he reacted defensively. He didn't even make them do anything bad, he just told them "these aren't the droids you're looking for" and had them go on their way.
---
Matthew's quote, continued:
"-stealing spaceships and crashing them-" [cut to a video clip of Obi-Wan and Anakin in RotS, crashing the Separatist vessel they escaped on after rescuing the Chancellor]
Once again, this is pretty easy to debunk because, again, Matthew leaves out the context.
The Separatists literally kidnapped the Chancellor of the Republic and the Jedi had to rescue him. They had to steal the ship to escape or be captured, and likely executed, by the Separatists--therefore allowing the Separatists (who are literally enslaving and oppressing countless other systems and run by a fucking fascist dictator) to win the war and take over the rest of the galaxy.
Once again, the Jedi were acting defensively.
And I feel like, all things considered, the Jedi stealing that Separatist ship, to escape from a situation the Separatists caused, in order to keep the galaxy from falling into the hands of an oppressive dictatorship and attempt to stay alive...is a pretty damn reasonable decision, don't you think?
And, just for added context, the ship was literally falling apart when they crashed it. They didn't crash it on purpose, it was an emergency landing. If you're gonna say the Jedi are bad for "crashing" the ship, you may as well get mad at every pilot who ever initiated an emergency landing because it's literally the same thing--and if we're putting the Jedi up to "objective scrutiny" then there shouldn't be any double standards.
---
Matthew's quote, continued:
"-or just outright lying about their own powers-" [cut to a video clip of Mace and Yoda talking, where Mace says they should tell the Senate their ability to use the Force is diminished and Yoda saying they shouldn't because it will only multiply their adversaries]
Here the Jedi weren't lying, like...at all.
No one was asking them about their ability to use the Force, so they couldn't be lying. They were withholding information, information that the Senate--as non-Jedi--had no right to know about unless it would actively affect the Republic. Which, again, at this point in time it wouldn't.
But, fine, let's just pretend that the Jedi were lying...
...they were lying for good reason.
Yoda is right here. Even if we ignore the fact that Yoda is a stand-in for GL and what he says is quite literally the canon truth (since he's the creator), the Senate is already pretty at odds with the Jedi, which we see later in AotC when Palpatine and the Senate pretty much strong-arm the Jedi into accepting the role of Generals in the war, despite being told point blank by Mace Windu that they're peace keepers and not soldiers. Do you really think the Senate (read: Palpatine) wouldn't have used this information against the Jedi?
And, are you completely ignoring the fact that Mace is literally saying that they should tell the Senate and Yoda is disagreeing with him?
Obviously Yoda's take on what they should or shouldn't tell the Senate isn't something that the entire Order believes--it's just his opinion on what they should do.
You can't say that "the Jedi are liars" and then play a clip that literally debunks that by having two Jedi disagreeing with each other about whether or not to tell the truth.
Ngl I have no idea why some people hate Mace Windu.
He's literally like one of my favorite Jedi, probably like my 2nd favorite if I had to give him a ranking, and he's just like...so awesome!
He's kind and compassionate.
He's brave.
He's intelligent.
He's witty.
He has a purple lightsaber.
He's such a talented duelist that he kicked Jango and Grievous' asses.
And almost beat Palpatine (something even Yoda couldn't do, like come on--that's badass!)
Like seriously, what's not to like???
The most badass Jedi in Star Wars, full stop.
I maintain that if Mace had been leading the Jedi instead of Yoda, things would have been very different, not just because of the qualities already mentioned, but because he was inclined to ACT when he saw a problem or potential situation. Yoda's biggest, most exploitable weakness, that handed victory to Palpatine in the Clone Wars and almost did the same with Luke, was his passivity and conservatism. Yoda was slow, painfully slow to act, unless he was absolutely certain it was necessary AND he was confident he knew what should be done. This is not entirely a negative quality, however he carried it far past the point of virtue and into harmful territory. Mace on the other hand tended to act swiftly and decisively when he saw an opportunity to further his goals or impede those of his foes.
It’s been a while since I watched the OT and, to be completely honest, most of my knowledge is based in the Prequel Era—so I’m only going to be responding about the stuff in that time period and not about Luke, someone better qualified can respond to that point if they want to.
—————
Mace was Head of the Order, Yoda was simply the eldest member of it and therefore a respected Jedi whose opinion held a lot of weight.
Yoda, and the Jedi as a whole, were not “passive” or “conservative” during TCW. They were backed into a corner where every decision was made to be a lose/lose situation and there was no way forward except directly into the trap that Palpatine laid for them, which was exactly how he planned it to be.
Not to mention that, throughout TCW and in RotS, we actively see the Jedi investigating and taking action and actively doing the opposite of what you’re saying.
As for him being slow to act and not wanting to act until he knew he was right-
The Force was completely clouded by the Dark Side by that point, so there was no way for anyone to feel out what they should do using it, and the Jedi were also aware that they were walking into a trap. But, like I said before, the only way forward was into said trap—they were being forced to head right into it because of how Palpatine set things up.
Considering that, do you really think it wasn’t understandable or that it was wrong for him to want to wait until they knew more/were more sure of their actions before doing anything drastic?
M A C E . W I N D U
“My name is General Mace Windu of the Jedi Order. At this point of the Clone War, I have dismantled and destroyed over 100,000 of you type one battle droids. I’m giving you an opportunity to peacefully lay down your weapons, so that you may be reprogrammed to serve a better purpose than spreading the mindless violence and chaos which you have inflicted upon the galaxy.”
I like to imagine there's a common Jedi tradition where masters give their padawans fountain pens the color of their lightsaber crystals after they return from Ilum. As a soft and gentle reminder to balance martial training with thought and philosophy.
A side effect of this is that every padawan in Research and Science class knows when Master Mace Windu was the one to grade their report.
Today I present:
Like, I can't blame the Council.
Area man deserves the world, but will settle for some peace and quiet
